upgrading video card on 1.1GHz Thunderbird system

Not sure what they cost in England, but a geforce 4ti 4200 64mb would be
neat.


--
Ed Light

Smiley :-/
MS Smiley :-\

Do you think a geforce 4ti would be a better bet for my system spec than an
FX card?


"Ed Light" wrote in message
...
Not sure what they cost in England, but a geforce 4ti 4200 64mb would be
neat.


--
Ed Light

Smiley :-/
MS Smiley :-\

"Iain Robinson" wrote
Do you think a geforce 4ti would be a better bet for my system spec than
an
FX card?
It is faster than a 5600 (but not the 5600 ultra).

Here's a good article:

http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030714/index.html

--
Ed Light

Smiley :-/
MS Smiley :-\

On Mon, 21 Jul 2003 17:17:37 +0100, "Iain Robinson"
wrote:

Do you think a geforce 4ti would be a better bet for my system spec than an
FX card?

As long as you don't turn on anisotropic filtering (or more than 2x
AF) then the Ti4200 family is blistering fast. Fabulous value for
'current' games.

Future proofing is another matter. AA&AF slows them down a bit, and
there's no hardware support for DX9 features.

FX cards support DX9 and also don't put on as much of a brake when
handling AF and other eyecandy. FX5200 has somewhat slow pixelwrites
and low bandwidth though, so I expect high resolutions to hurt
performance. It's for making pixels look good, not for _many_ pixels.

Considering your budget, it still seems like a hard choice. In your
case, I think I'd go with the FX5200ultra because its advanced GPU
will do all the work itself, rather than the cpu. And because I think
it may be cheaper than a Ti4200?
But there's a reverse argument as well. Is future proofing worth it?
With a 1.1GHz cpu? Maybe. Even for current games, I can tell you one
thing; Even 800x600, and even 640x480 look damn good with 4xAA,
texture sharpening and 4xAF!
(If you do get the FX5200, make sure you turn everything on.)

There's a few people complaining about 'flicker' and other
disturbancies with the FX5200 though...


ancra

"Ed Light" wrote in message
...
I thought the 5200 was much slower than the 4200. Are you saying that with
anistropic and antialising turned on, the 5200 is faster? That would
really
be neat!

Confirmed:
http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic...s/image009.gif

But it's half as fast without it:
http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic...s/image005.gif


--
Ed Light

Smiley :-/
MS Smiley :-\

On Mon, 21 Jul 2003 23:06:54 -0700, "Ed Light"
wrote:


"Ed Light" wrote in message
...
I thought the 5200 was much slower than the 4200. Are you saying that with
anistropic and antialising turned on, the 5200 is faster? That would
really
be neat!

Confirmed:
http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic...s/image009.gif

Just note that this is with 4x full sampling AA and 8x Anisotropic F.
Ti4200 survives quincunx AA and 2x AF, or even 4x AF, better, and that
is very pretty too.

Also note that testing starts at 1024x768, and I think that's a
painbarrier for the FX5200's slow pixelwrites. Performance will pick
up at 800x600.

But it's half as fast without it:
http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic...s/image005.gif

Yes, I think the attraction of the 4200 is that you could always fall
back and get a decent framerate. You have to consider price, I
suppose. You have to see what you have to cough up for a 4200. You
could find some sale or secondhand.
Attractions of the 5200 are DX9 and a lower price(?).
If you get the 5200, try get the ultra, if you can afford it. See to
that you'll be able to return it, if it doesn't work properly, as
well.


ancra

"Iain Robinson" wrote in
message ...
Do you think a geforce 4ti would be a better bet for my system spec than
an
FX card?


The rule for most hardware upgrades is to get the very best that you can
afford. A higher end video card may not benefit you too much if you're
running a slower system ... but it will grow with your system when you
decide to upgrade that.

The real question is "Which is a better performing card?" And from what I've
read it depends on how much you like the new eye candy (antistrophic
filtering, anti-aliasing, et al.) The 4200 is quite a bit faster without all
of that stuff, but the 5200 handles the eye candy stuff much better.

In my opinion the faster raw rendering rate would make me lean towards the
4200 because, like others have said, you can always turn back the eye candy
and still get a playable game, but the eye candy and DX9 support of the 5200
is appealing as well. I think that if you're going to go with an FX you
should shoot higher than the low end.

Especially when it comes to nVidia the high end of the last generation is
easily better than the low end of the newest. They just slap some new cool
features on it and try to make people think that it's new eye candy
outweighs the raw performance of the previous iterations.

Just my two cents ...


Drumguy